Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/217

Rh Picture No. 3 showed a soldier prying the Russian Imperial eagles off a palace, the crowd below burning them. Underneath these words:

On the roof of a palace, a soldier is tearing down the hateful emblem of autocracy. Below the crowd is burning the eagles. The soldier in the crowd is explaining that the overthrow of autocracy is only the first step in the march of social revolution.

It is easy to overthrow autocracy. Autocracy rests on nothing but the blind submission of soldiers. The Russian soldiers merely opened their eyes and autocracy disappeared.

These pictures, papers and leaflets were flung up into the air to be blown by favorable winds into the German trenches. They were dropped from aeroplanes and smuggled across in shoes and boxes and on prisoners returning to Germany.

All this disintegrated the German armies and made for revolution. General Hoffman said: "It was Lenin and the Bolsheviks that broke our morale and gave us defeat and the revolution you now see ruining us." Probably the propaganda was not so effective as this. But it did prevent the German troops from coming to overwhelm the Soviet. The Russian bourgeoisie began scheming for intervention by the Allies.

On January 18, 191 8, at the height of the struggle between the classes the Constituent Assembly convened. It reflected an earlier phase of the Revolution—a viewpoint now discarded. It was elected from antiquated